59 pages • 1-hour read
Homesick for Another World
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Symbols & Motifs
Mental Health
Mental health conditions are a recurring motif in Homesick For Another World: Many of the protagonists of the stories in the collection deal with mental health conditions or live in close proximity to people who do. When characters experience delusions, the stories take these delusions seriously, presenting them as reality. This careful, intentional treatment of their mental health suggests that these symptoms should be recognized as a part of modern life, rather than dismissed or hidden away.
The narrator of “The Weirdos” is in a relationship with a man who experiences delusions. On their first date, he tells her that, “looking into a crystal ball, he’d just read a private message from God in the silvery vortex of [her] left pupil” (53). The narrator casually dismisses this, and gradually learns to accept his delusions as a fact of life, as when she agrees to shoot the birds that he believes “stare […] into [their] souls” (55). Although the narrator hates her boyfriend, she grows to accept his delusions and ultimately decides not to leave him. The story implies that she stays with him because, as the landlord of her building, he offers her housing security. Moshfegh presents mental health conditions and housing insecurity as realities that cannot be ignored.
Moshfegh’s straightforward use of the motif of mental health is most visible in “A Better Place,” the last story in the collection. The young narrator appears to have anxiety and depression: “My brain hurts and I cry all the time. I don’t want to be here on Earth for one moment longer” (274). The narrator and her brother believe that they are from a place other than Earth (the titular “better place”) and they are desperate to return. This delusion is contrasted by the simplicity of the narrator’s explanation of how to return: “Oh, you have to die. Or you have to kill the right person” (271). Throughout the story, adults dismiss the narrator’s determination to kill Jarek Jaskolka, the person she thinks will help her get to the better place. Because they don’t take her delusions seriously, the narrator is able to bring poisonous jam and a weapon to Jaskolka’s house, putting all parties in danger. In this story, mental health conditions are used as an allegorical representation of generational trauma; the straightforward tone Moshfegh cultivates suggests these signs of mental distress should be taken seriously.
This motif appears throughout the collection as a way of demonstrating challenging aspects of modern life. Moshfegh takes her characters’ mental health seriously, presenting their delusions in a straightforward manner that encourages audiences to read with empathy.
Drug Use
Drug use is a recurring motif throughout Homesick For Another World, often appearing as a way of highlighting a character’s isolation or their struggles to survive in a capitalist society. Moshfegh’s depictions of drug use vary widely across the collection and rarely offer a moral judgment. Instead, addiction is presented as one feature of a character’s complex personality.
The narrator of “A Dark and Winding Road” grows “so paranoid, so deeply anxious” (75) when he smokes marijuana, but he spends a “wonderful afternoon” (87) smoking methamphetamines with a stranger at his family’s cabin. In this instance, the narrator’s emotional isolation from his wife leads him to smoke marijuana in the cabin; however, his use of methamphetamines at the cabin enables his transformative encounter with Michelle. Similarly, the narrator of “Slumming” refers to the people who sell her drugs as “zombies” (112) but also as “saint[s]” (125) and says that the experience of buying feels like a “rite of passage, a sacrament” (125). There is no indication that the narrator’s drug use during the summers affects her job as a teacher during the school year; rather, the story suggests that it is her job in the crowded, dirty city that leads her to drug use. In both of these instances, drug use is not presented as the root of the character’s problems, but as a symptom of larger systemic issues.
Ultimately these contradictory depictions of drug use in Homesick for Another World resist any clear moral interpretation; rather, the recurrent appearance of this motif highlights the presence of other social issues, such as isolation and the difficulty of life under capitalism.
Fatness
Many of the stories in Homesick for Another World feature characters described as fat, and, although less obvious than mental health conditions and drug use, the motif of fatness is crucial to Moshfegh’s work. Characters are described as fat in a derogatory way 46 times in the collection. The most virulent language comes from characters with disorders of consumption, such as compulsive spending, drug or sex addiction, or active eating disorders. The motif of fatness reflects the hypocrisy of the characters expressing anti-fat sentiment.
The unnamed narrator of “Malibu” displays many habits of disordered eating, such as restricting his food intake and purging after meals. Although he does not acknowledge the severity of his own eating disorder, the narrator is vocal in his anti-fatness. When the narrator meets Terri, he immediately criticizes her body, thinking that “maybe she’d be okay looking if I put her on a diet, bought her some workout DVDs, got her teeth fixed” (50). Although he knows nothing about Terri, the narrator attributes her fatness to laziness: “I guessed she sat in front of [the TV] and ate cookies all day” (50). He also assumes that, because Terri weighs more than him, “she would be grateful no matter what I did to her,” and ultimately he is violent in their sexual encounter. The hypocrisy of the narrator’s actions—criticizing Terri’s body while actively harming his own—highlights the severity of his eating disorder.
The narrator of “Slumming” is similarly critical of others’ bodies while ignoring her own self-destructive behaviors. She describes a group of fat women in monstrous terms: “pinched eyes, bulbous mouths, and throats like frogs. Their bodies were so fat their breasts hung and rested on their knees” (118). The narrator wonders what it would feel like “to let myself go” like she imagines the women have. The condescending tone of this question belies the fact the narrator has an active drug addiction and leads the reader to wonder what the fat women think of the narrator.
The motif of fatness is used throughout Homesick for Another World, often in critical statements made by people with disorders of consumption. Although these anti-fat sentiments can be difficult to read, it’s important to remember that the text is not necessarily endorsing these ideas. Most often, these statements function to expose the self-delusion of the people making them and to demonstrate the connections between related disorders.
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